I hadn't read Charlie's piece, re-confirming his writing is as good and thorough as his DJing. Unlike Charlie I thought it was a great session. The Doors weren't as good as Areoplane, Grace Slick's vocals were fine and the band were good. Morrison's histrionics were entertaining even if his voice wasn't as good as Slick's, a tendency to shout/roar. It wasn't just the bands though, it was the atmosphere, the crowd, the Roundhouse itself, the smoke and dope... It was an event, one of a kind not too common at that time. Also two (big) bands doing two long sets each, not something that happens often.Aly

Pete Fowler wrote:Wrong, though, Andy. Charlie so hated smoking and the entire dope culture that it could easily, so to speak, cloud his judgement...not that the Doors were particularly good that night, but Jim Morrison was manifestly not Reg with intellectual pretensions, however smart the quip. Reg came up with nothing that could have been so damned appropriate as the positioning of The End in Apocalypse Now; and nothing that fired the young's 1967 ambitions in the manner of Five to One.

The Doors made some great records, I'll grant you, but they also set the benchmark for humourless pretension in late 60s culture. And even their great records are piffle compared to 'Wild Thing'.

When I moved from Leicester to London I spent the first couple of months in late 1975 staying with Alan Balfour who lived in the basement at 11 Liston Road – Charlie's house. Charlie was one of earliest examples of vehement anti-smoking I ever met. I well remember leaving for the tube in the mornings and meeting his mother in the street having an early cigarette because Charlie banished her from the house.

Of course I'm interested - in the subject, the event, and your contributions. As an American, all I know about mod culture is 'mod haircut' and that the rockers had Elvis type hair. When it has been explained to me, it isn't quite understandable, cultural subtleties perhaps. I'd love to attend and at long last gain some sense of it all. I see you are giving a lecture and that there is to be a rumble on the beach. I assume you are involved in organizing or perhaps setting up this event?

I can't claim too much credit, the driving force behind it all is a colleague who's an Anglophile American. Revealing, perhaps, that it's taken her to kick our Brit backsides into doing something! I'm giving a paper on the cultural meanings of London & Brighton as two key locales for Mod culture and in particular for 'Quadrophenia'.

Not a bad programme at all. I'm sure it mentioned or discussed quite a few of the points raised in our previous conversations here. The music used, more or less throughout the hour, was well-sourced too.

It made a good point about the end of national service in the early 1960s, and the liberating influence this had on the yoot. Also, the increasing availability of work, which gave young people a lot more flexibility and a bit more earning power. The burden of marriage and 'settling down' loomed heavily. By their early twenties, some of the witnesses commented, their rousting days would be over as there'd be a family to support. The wider availability of contraception - especially for women - was still a few years away, which would bring different kinds of freedom.

The book "Mods the New Religion - the style and music of the 1960s Mods" by Paul 'Smiler' Anderson appears to be well worth investigation for those interested in the subject, (particularly if you can borrow a copy as I have done). It of course includes chapters on clothes, scooters, and mods'n'rockers, but more interestingly perhaps lots about the music - photos, memorabilia, and interviews with those who were there.http://www.omnibuspress.com/Product.asp ... Id=1088129

Just reviving this thread to post a link to a great Ian Penman LRB piece on mod which someone just shared in the other place. I think his LRB pieces are probably some of the best music journalism around these days.